Subject: Re: questions about converting sparc to MI installboot(8)
To: Jason R Thorpe <thorpej@wasabisystems.com>
From: Luke Mewburn <lukem@wasabisystems.com>
List: port-sparc
Date: 05/07/2002 01:00:05
On Mon, May 06, 2002 at 07:51:10AM -0700, Jason Thorpe wrote:
  |  > An alternate option would be to convert the primary boostrap bootxx
  |  > away from the bbinfo approach (of hard-coded blocks) to a "search
  |  > the filesystem for /boot" approach a la the alpha/pmax/vax/sparc64.
  |  > This is much more effort, but would result in one less "bootxx flag
  |  > day".
  | 
  | I'm not sure there's room in the SPARC bootxx to do this.

It's interesting that the alpha can fit a bootxx_ffs into 7.5KB but
the SPARC cannot :-)

My current "binary" bootxx + 32byte magic is 7308 bytes, out of a
maximum of 7680 bytes.  If you remove the bbinfo which wouldn't be
needed (1068 bytes), that leaves  7680 - 7308 + 1068 = 1440 bytes
free to do the ffs searching code, which may or may not be enough.
There may be other saving as well, but I'll leave that to those more
experienced in stuff sparc code into little places :)

Given that, sticking with my original plan seems like the easiest and
quickest approach to convert sparc to /usr/sbin/installboot...

Luke.